By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org. It’s shocking, but a mainstream media outlet has actually mentioned the idea of limits to growth and limits of nature.  The New York Times, no less, has run a front-page story on the drought in California, invoking the concept of limits, in an article titled “California Drought Tests History of Endless
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org In the U.S., almost all the weather news seems to be fixated on the snow storms back East.  Yet despite the cold and snow, more records for heat have been broken than for cold.  The winter of 2014-15 has been so warm across much of the West that more than 20
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org For several years now, the topic that water would be the next oil has been bandied about, implying that water would be as valuable as fossil fuels. That day of reckoning may be coming sooner than many people think.  Last week, Reuters reported that the city of São Paulo – South
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Most Americans are probably aware that California and much of the U.S. Southwest is in the grips of a major drought.  And it’s likely that people know at least something about conserving water.  Take shorter showers, don’t wash your car, water your lawn at risk of $500 fines, etc. But a
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org It’s certainly not unusual for temperatures to be hot this time of year, as summer is in full swing in the Northern Hemisphere.  But things are getting really, really hot across the globe. Last month the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) reported that the period March-May was the hottest in more than 120
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By Anjie Cai, guest youth blogger for www.howmany.org. It’s frightening to look at bottled water from an economic perspective. Using cost-benefit analysis to examine the impact of bottled water, we realize how harmful it actually is. The Environmental Working Group’s 2011 Bottled Water Scorecard reported that bottled water costs “up to 1,900 times more than tap
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org The governor of California has declared that the state is experiencing a drought emergency and is urging water rationing.  Governor Jerry Brown called it “perhaps the worst drought that California has ever seen since records (began) about 100 years ago.” This came shortly after the release of a MIT study this
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org A new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that climate change is likely to put 40 percent more people worldwide at risk of absolute water scarcity, due to changes in rainfall and evaporation. Unsurprisingly, the study
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org In this summer of drought in many places around the world, concern about water is growing.  Coping with water scarcity is a main topic at World Water Week, which is currently winding down in Stockholm, Sweden.  This is an annual gathering of leaders, experts, and perhaps a few activists to discuss
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org According to a new report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Pakistan is “one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, not far from being classified, ‘water-scarce’.” This has huge implications for the world’s sixth most populous country, which currently stands at 182 million people.  Projections released last month by
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